Overview

There's nothing dull about these city streets—they're crowded with cars, trucks, buses, and trains. There are plenty of noises, too: a fire siren, a train whistle, and non-stop honks and beeps.

Cari Meister, creator of Tiny's Bath, When Tiny Was Tiny and Tiny Goes to the Library, has created a city filled with crazy sights and sounds while using a rhyming text that just cries out to be read aloud. The playful text combines with Steven ...

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Overview

There's nothing dull about these city streets—they're crowded with cars, trucks, buses, and trains. There are plenty of noises, too: a fire siren, a train whistle, and non-stop honks and beeps.

Cari Meister, creator of Tiny's Bath, When Tiny Was Tiny and Tiny Goes to the Library, has created a city filled with crazy sights and sounds while using a rhyming text that just cries out to be read aloud. The playful text combines with Steven Guarnaccia's exuberant illustrations to create a busy city street children will want to visit over and over again.

Taxis, trucks, horses, buses and more all hurry along a busy, noisy city street.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly
- Publisher's Weekly

Brisk rhymed sentences, punctuated by a catchy refrain, give this traffic book a vigorous stop-and-go rhythm. Every spread buzzes with pedestrian and vehicular activity. The fanciful urban images include bulbous 1930s-style cars, old-fashioned buses and antique velocipedes. As the pace quickens, the occasional elephant, horse or gondola passes by. Meister (the Tiny easy readers) alternates couplets ("Dumpster truck lost a load./ Garbage mess in the road") with an anxious "Honk! Honk! Beep! Beep!/ Busy, busy city street." Guarnaccia, whose Goldilocks and the Three Bears: A Tale Moderne revisited 1950s design, creates a stylized Art Deco cityscape and hand-letters the entire text in tall, rectangular characters. The velvety palette of olive, rust and gold contrasts with tight angles and solid black details, and the atmosphere is charged. Hurried travelers move in an environment of strong directional lines--bold diagonals intersect horizontal curbs and vertical skyscrapers, and traffic flows left to right. Meister's rushing words and Guarnaccia's visually intense compositions excite the nerves like an authentic noisy street. The book ends on a couplet rather than on the "Honk! Honk! Beep! Beep!" chant, but wide-awake readers will remedy that omission. Ages 4-7. (Sept.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

Children's Literature

A few brief verses punctuated by the title refrain almost get lost in this noise- and action-filled depiction of the frantic activity on the city streets. Guarnaccia's inventive calligraphy is the star of the tale. The sculpturesque jacket/cover title and aggressive "honk!"s and "beep!"s on the endpapers make it clear that the few words, written large, are metaphors for city sounds. The cars, trucks, building facades, and even the people are all design elements in double-page scenes meant to delight the eye and stimulate emotion. 2000, Viking/Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers. Ages 3 to 6. Reviewer: Ken Marantz and Sylvia Marantz

School Library Journal

PreS-Gr 2-Endpapers with blaring onomatopoeic honks and beeps loudly announce the content of this humorous story. The succinct, rhyming, hand-lettered text presents the noises and activity that make up life in a bustling urban center. Fire trucks rush to burning buildings, dumpsters lose their loads, postal workers deliver mail, school buses deliver children, and-surrounding all the flurry-is the unremitting din of traffic. The double-page retro cartoon illustrations are filled with playful touches. Guarnaccia varies the pages containing the refrain, "Honk! Honk! Beep! Beep! Busy, Busy City Street," by picturing such incongruities as a gondola, a unicycle, or a car with square wheels going down the road. His people often wear outlandish clothing, and the vehicles sport wacky designs. Children will love spotting these funny elements as well as chanting along with the refrain. Pair this story with Arnold Adoff's Street Music (HarperCollins, 1994) for a celebration of city sounds.-Marianne Saccardi, Norwalk Community College, CT Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Leonard S. Marcus

Dodge that dumpster! Catch that cab! Funky, comic strip0inspired drawings, as well as rhyming words that balloon and blare across the page, celebrate the helter-skelter rhythm of life in the heart of a big city.
— Parenting

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